So Cold
by DarthGabithaTheHutt
Summary: Dean tries to help Sara when her mother dies on a hunt. Preseries, no pairings. Set directly after Lines and Divides. Reviews loved. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Dean tries to help Sara when her mother dies on a hunt. Pre-series, no real pairings (only mentions of failed relationships).

This story involves Sara Lucian, a character from three of my other Supernatural stories (Creepy-Ass Orchard of Death, The Louisiana and Lines and Divides). Reading those stories probably isn't strictly necessary, but might help. Sara is a friend (and nothing more) of Dean's who is also a young Hunter. She specialises in exorcisms and was trained by her mother, just as Dean was trained by John. Reviews are hugely appreciated.

This story takes place almost immediately after Lines and Divides.

xxx  
Grant County, Wisconsin  
3rd September 2002

It was nothing more than a simple fact of life that, occasionally, children argued with their parents. Sara Lucian was no exception. For most of her life, she'd been arguing with her mother about her future, her life-choices and her occupation. Recently, they'd moved onto the company she kept. All very usual arguments, at least until you knew that Sara was an exorcist, her future was most likely a short, bloody one and she spent plenty of time with a young man who had spent his whole life fighting ghosts and demons after his mother had been killed by a supernatural baddie. Normality was what you made it, after all.

"I don't understand the blind faith you have in the boy!" Amelia yelled.

Sara shrugged, fighting to keep her own voice level. "And I don't understand why you're so determined for me to wind up alone."

"You're a Lucian! You'll live alone and die alone. I told you that when you started."

"Well, I don't believe it."

"It's the way you have to work!"

"Why? So I can shuffle off this mortal coil at the ripe old age of thirty?"

"Don't even start, Sara. You chose this life."

"I chose to help. To make a difference. And Dean will help me do that. He'll keep me alive."

"No, he won't! He's a Hunter, Sara. They're useful, but you can't depend on them, you can't trust them."

"Jesus Christ, Mum, all I did was a couple of wards to help keep Sam Winchester safe."

"Because Dean asked you to."

"You would've done it if Mr Winchester had asked you. Oh, no, sorry, you wouldn't. You think that shutting your eyes to the truth is all it takes to keep someone safe!"

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Amelia asked. She wasn't yelling any more, but somehow that carefully-polite voice was so much worse.

Something inside Sara snapped. "Hill Boarding School for Girls. Or, as it was to you, the Dumping Ground for Unwanted Daughters. The school you made me go to and it was haunted, Mum, and you didn't even bother to look into its past! If Adrian Atwood hadn't come to help me out, I'd be dead. And you couldn't even deign to pick up the goddamn phone!"

"I was trying to keep you safe."

"Oh, so when you send me to the site of a past atrocity at the age of eleven, you're keeping me safe, but when I hang out with someone who actually cares about protecting people, I'm being careless and short-sighted? Is that it?"

"If you have so much faith in Dean Winchester, why haven't you told him the truth about what you do, what's likely to happen to you? You know it, Sara. What we do twists us until we're barely recognisable and when we get too bad, we become the hunted."

"Mum, the Purge was hundreds of years ago, get over it! We work with Hunters now, remember?"

"Like my father was working with the Hunter who slit his throat?"

Sara froze. "What?"

"That's the kind of people Dean belongs to, Sara."

"Mr Winchester would never-"

"Not the Winchesters. Hunters. It's in their blood, Sara, not their family. To survive as a Hunter, you have to be a certain kind of killer."

"Really? What about Will and Adrian? Or their father, or Pastor Jim or a thousand other good men? They are not killers and they sure as hell do a lot more good than we ever will! You know, I think I get why Dean bugs you so much. It's because he doesn't know the rules, isn't it? Doesn't know not to tempt me with friendship and humanity. Will and Adrian keep their distance now I'm an exorcist, because they knew you first. They think that's the way it has to be. Dean doesn't and you can't stand that maybe I can do the job and have a life when you can barely manage one or the other."

The slap was hard across her check, but Sara had been half-expecting it and snapped her head back round to stare her mother down.

"Sore spot, Mum?" she asked, almost casually.

"You are my daughter, Sara, for better or for worse. And you will do as you are told. Stop following that boy around like a love-struck schoolchild and do your job. Understood?"

"No."

"Then let me make it simple for you. One day, Dean will kill you. And he might just enjoy it."

The forced-casualness vanished, replaced with fury, pure and simple. "Go to hell!"

And without waiting for her mother to reply, Sara turned on her heel and stormed out of the house.

xxx

For almost a fortnight, Sara avoided her mother. It was worrying easy, especially considering that they lived in the same house. Amelia spent most of her time in the attic of the house, working on a way to track down possessed hosts, while Sara would happily drive to nearby Black Earth to train with Will and Adrian Atwood, who were both Hunters lacking a hunt and desperate for something to do.

Sara's relationship with the Atwood brothers was unusual to say the least. Adrian Atwood was five years older than Sara and saw her as something between a little sister and a trainee. They had first met when Sara's school had turned out to be haunted; with her mother in America, all Sara was able to do was to call up the only Hunter she could remember. Adrian had promptly salted-and-burned the relevant corpse. Since then, Sara had helped him with research and simple fact checking - his least favourite part of any hunt - and in return he'd taught her how to hunt. Despite respecting Amelia Lucian a great deal, Adrian had never agreed with her decision to shut Sara out of the supernatural world. He'd never dared to try and change Amelia's mind, but he'd taught Sara how to track, fight, spot a pattern. And ever since Sara had started to train as an exorcist, he and Will had slowly started to withdraw from her.

Sara had always known that she was first and foremost 'Amelia's daughter' to the two Atwoods. They respected her as a hunter and exorcist in her own right, but she had started out as 'Amelia's daughter' and that was what she would always be to them, which would be much easier to put up with if she wasn't so damn annoyed with her mother.

After a satisfying afternoon spent sparring against the two brothers, Sara was in a reasonably good mood when she arrived back home. At twenty-one, she was starting to feel too old to be living at home, but she didn't have any money to rent a place of her own and spent so little time there anyway it would be pointless. Besides, even after two and a half years of exorcisms, one and half working solo, she still had a lot to learn from her mother. Admittedly, some of those lessons she didn't want to learn, but 'want' didn't count for much in her world.

Amelia was in the kitchen when Sara walked in, the table covered in notes and maps.

"Bobby Singer called," she said, destroying any worries Sara had had about her mother trying to 'talk' to her again. Business, she could deal with.

"About what?" Sara asked.

"He was on a hunt in Minnesota, but he had to back off. Wants us to pick up the slack."

"Bobby bailed on a hunt? What happened?"

"He thought it was just some sort of spirit, but now he thinks it's a succubus, which, if he's right, means he cannot get involved."

Sara couldn't argue with that. Succubuses were nasty, targeting males in order to reproduce. The conception could sometimes suck all the life out of the human - and there was no decent way to safeguard against the inexplicable attraction all males felt towards the succubus. It was lucky that Bobby had figured it out before running into the demon.

Amelia gestured at some of the papers. "I've been looking through Bobby's notes. Quite a few females have gone missing as well."

"Wait, succubuses and incubuses? Great."

"Several of the women have since been found. Dead, no obvious reason why, although all showed signs of sexual abuse."

"So guys get pheromones, women get raped. Our gender always gets the worst deal. Why did the women die?"

"If a woman is pregnant with the child of an incubus and miscarries, she dies as well."

"Nice. So where am I headed?"

"We're headed to a little spot near Birchdale, Minnesota. Right on the border with Canada."

"We?" Sara blinked. "Mum, you sure?" Amelia Lucian was an _exorcist, _not a Hunter. And Lord knows she was vocal enough about her disapproval of Sara hunting, that was for sure.

"You can't handle something like this on your own, Sara. And there aren't really any other female Hunters who could help you."

"Well, taking Dean into the lair of a succubus certainly wouldn't end well. So how do we kill a whole clan of sex-mad monsters?"

"Pheromone bomb."

"Excuse me?"

"It was Bobby's idea. We find their lair, clear out all the humans and set a chunk of C4 covered in pheromones."

"So the demons pick up on the sexual vibes and walk right into an explosion. Nice. Want me to call Caleb?"

"Is he still in New York?"

"No. Nebraska. Lincoln, I think."

"Well, we'll just have to detour. Tell him to make it quickly, alright? I want these monsters dead."

And that was odd in itself. Amelia Lucian rarely hunted and made a point of not letting any job become too personal. But Sara never expected to fully understand how her mother's mind worked.

xxx

_Incubus - In medieval European folklore, the incubus is a male demon (or evil spirit) who visits women in their sleep to lie with them in ghostly sexual intercourse. The woman who falls victim to an incubus will not awaken, although may experience it in a dream. Should she get pregnant the child will grow inside her as any normal child, except that it will possess supernatural capabilities. Usually the child grows into a person of evil intent or a powerful wizard. Legend has it that the magician Merlin was the result of the union of an incubus and a nun. A succubus is the female variety, and she concentrates herself on men. According to one legend, the incubus and the succubus were fallen angels. _

For once, the legends were more or less accurate. The whole 'ghostly sexual intercourse' thing was crap though, Sara knew. Incubuses snatched pretty girls of child-bearing age and slept with them whether the girls were willing or not. The succubuses produced some sort of pheromones, effectively switching off males' upstairs brains. There was no way a male could hunt a succubus, but there was no real danger from an incubus for a strong female who knew what was going on and had access to some heavy weaponry.

Sara half turned in her seat to toss the book onto the back seat of her mother's car. "Hey, Mum?" she asked, straining to reach another. "What do we do if any of the women are pregnant?"

"Nothing. The child of an incubus isn't always evil. Just different."

"Like a seer, do you mean?"

"That kind of different, yes."

"Shouldn't we tell the women something? I mean, what if the kid starts levitating or seeing the dead or something?"

Amelia shrugged. "Ignorance is bliss, Sara. You can try and make them understand, if you want to. Got the map?"

"Uh, next left," Sara replied. "Should be about another hour to the town, then we need to head up into the hills. Meant to be some caves there that Bobby thought might be the place."

Amelia nodded and took the turning.

"Mum? Why'd you come on this hunt?"

"Because I'm not nearly as full of apathy as you seem to think."

Sara looked at her hands, bunched in her lap. "I never said you didn't care about your work," she said softly. "Just that this isn't normally your work."

"I've tangled with incubuses before. I know what to do, and you might as well learn about it as well if you're serious about hunting. Besides, the more you know, the less you have to rely on other people."

"When on earth did you hunt an incubus?" Sara asked, ignoring the second comment. She didn't want another argument. Well, actually, she did, but she also knew it wouldn't do the slightest bit of good.

"There was a group of them in England, before you were born. I didn't know any Hunters to pass the information onto, so I dealt with it myself."

"What did you use? Another pheromone bomb?"

"Something like that."

"Did you ever hunt anything in America?"

"Of course. I met John on a hunt, you know."

"Mr Winchester? Really?" Sara asked, more interested than she would've liked to admit.

"Damn idiot thought I was another damsel in distress. I had to be quite firm with him."

_Quite firm _was a phrase that Amelia rarely used these days. It was her way of saying she had to get violent and Sara couldn't help the grin that spread across her face, the last traces of her anger with her mother fading away.

"Bet he loved that." Sara risked a sideways glance at her mother, who was keeping her gaze firmly on the road like the conscientious driver she was. "Mum, were you and Mr Winchester ever... you know?"

"Debating shotguns? No," Amelia said as Sara nearly choked on thin air. That had been the excuse Sara had used for why she was suddenly spending so much time with Caleb, the weapon's dealer. "And by the way, Sara, although I understand that virginity is hardly useful for our line of work, I'm a little appalled at your taste."

"So what was my father like then?" Sara asked when she could speak again.

"Two arms, two legs, nice smile. What do you really want to know?"

"I don't know. Why him?"

"Because an immaculate conception was out of the question."

Sara rolled her eyes. "Was he a Hunter?"

"Lord, no. He was about as far away from a Hunter as you could get. But he was nice. And musical, oddly enough."

"What was his name?"

"Uh... Li. He called himself Li. Never did ask what it was short for. Lionel, I suppose."

"Surname?"

Amelia gave her a look, smiling slightly.

"Right, of course. Just ships passing in the night, huh?"

"No romance. That's the way it works, remember?"

Sara couldn't argue with that. Her one and only relationship that had lasted longer than an orgasm had been with Caleb and that had only started when she became fed up of demons targeting her because of her virginity. They had both known that it wasn't so much a relationship as a series of multiple one-night stands and it had died in a matter of months.

"Did I tell you how to track the demons?" Amelia asked, deftly changing the subject.

Sara shook her head and tried to pay attention as her mother explained. For one moment, that conversation had been almost normal. And that was just sort of weird.

xxx  
Northern Minnesota,  
19th September, 2002

Amelia had been training Sara as an exorcist for about three years, but she'd never seen her daughter on a hunt before. Exorcisms, yes, but not a straightforward hunt. Her daughter had an easy confidence in this work that went deeper than her confidence in exorcisms, although Amelia hadn't watched Sara perform an exorcism since she started working solo in 2001. Maybe that confidence was growing, she didn't know. But this work... Sara was good at it, Amelia realised. Better at it than she had thought or expected.

Sara's casual ease around weaponry, though, was slightly disconcerting. Currently, she had a shotgun in her arms, a revolver in a holster at her hip and at least two knives strapped to her body, not to mention the bomb in the pack she carried on her back. Amelia limited herself to a rifle loaded with sanctified bullets and a glowing mage-stone held loosely in one hand as they made their careful way through the tree-infested hills surrounding the plagued town. As long as the stone glowed blue, they were heading in the right direction. Simple as that. Normally Amelia was against casual use of magic, anyone in their right mind was, but this was important.

From the way Sara kept glancing at her, she wanted to ask about the stone, but she held her tongue and stayed focused on what they were doing. Namely, attempting to take down one succubus and five incubuses. Piece of cake.

The stone's glow deepened to almost black. "We're close," Amelia murmured.

Together, the two Lucians stayed low as they moved forward, staying in shadows and under as much cover as possible. Amelia had been taught how to do this by her father, while Sara had learnt from Adrian Atwood, but the lessons were the same.

"Mum, look right. Nice private cabin, wouldn't you say?"

Amelia eyed the cabin. Boarded up windows, but cracks in the boards allowed the glow of candles to be seen. Far enough away from the town for no one to think of looking there for the missing people. It was in an oblong-shaped the clearing, with the tree line ending between ten and thirty metres away from the cabin. They'd twisted their approach slightly to creep up to the side of the building, where the cover went as close to it as possible.

"Has to be the place. This or the caves, they were the only options."

"How do we tell if the bogeyman's home? Pretend to be girl scouts selling cookies?"

"Not quite." Amelia stood up and lobbed the stone hard at the cabin. It thudded off one of the boards.

"What the hell was that meant to do?" Sara asked.

"If the stone gets too close to a demon, it shatters. Whole stone, ergo no danger. The demons are probably out getting food or looking for new victims."

"They wouldn't just leave the captives, surely."

"They snatched a male, remember? He'll be bewitched, so enamoured of the succubus that he'll do anything for her. He'll be the one making sure the girls don't leave."

"Any way to break that spell?"

"Time and distance from the succubus. For now, we'll just have to find some way to deal with him."

"Cool. Just give me a minute."

Amelia made a grab for her daughter, but she was just a fraction of a second too late. Sara walked silently up to the front door of the cabin and then hammered loudly on the door. When it opened, she gave the man a bright smile.

"Sorry to disturb you but-"

She ducked as the man tried to snatch her and grabbed his wrist, twisting around to pull him clear out of the house. He was large, well-muscled, but they were the muscles of someone who liked to charm the ladies, not of someone who regularly had to fight for his life. Sara gave him a kick behind his knees to knock him sprawling and then another quick jab to the head, knocking him out. Speed won over strength, lucky for Sara.

Sara looked back at her mother. "All clear."

Amelia sighed. "That was not-"

"Did you have a better idea?" Sara said. "If I can't deal with one sex-addled guy, I'm a pretty poor Lucian, Mum. Look, berate me later if you want."

Without waiting for her mother's response, Sara pushed the cabin door open again and entered, slowly, cautiously, the shotgun held ready. The main room was empty, with basic, battered furniture and some old food, but no missing girls. There was, however, one other door. After a quick but thorough check of the main room, Sara passed the backpack containing the bomb to her mother. The plan had been for Sara to free the prisoners while Amelia set up the bomb. Amelia had set up a trap like this once before, but was extremely bad at picking locks.

Sara crossed to the second door. It was locked, but she wouldn't have expected anything else and had it opened quickly enough. As Amelia carefully unpacked the parts for the bomb, Sara pushed the door open. Five frightened females stared back at her.

"It's okay," Sara said, propping her shotgun up by the door and approaching the nearest woman. "We're going to get you out of here, alright?" The women were all manacled to the wall, so Sara started work on the first set of locks. "The guys who kept you here, where are they?"

"They went for food," one woman said softly. She had a large bruise across one side of her face.

The first woman was free. Sara moved quickly onto the second. "Do you know how long they'll be?"

"They're normally a couple of hours." The same woman again. She seemed to be the leader, official or otherwise, of the women.

Two down, three to go. "How long have they been gone?"

"A couple of hours."

"Damn it," Sara said. "Mum, hurry up!" She stuffed her lock-picks back in her pocket and pulled her revolver out. "Shield your eyes," she ordered the women. When each one did so, Sara shot the chains in half. The women were still in manacles, but were no longer chained to anything. Good enough. "Well?" Sara snapped when no one moved. "Do any of you really want to stay here?"

The woman with the bruised face was the first to move, but the other women followed almost instantly. Sara grabbed her shotgun and turned to her mother.

"I'm done," Amelia said, picking up her own rifle. "Do the incu- Do the men get their supplies from town?"

"I think so."

"Okay, so we go around, right?" Sara said. "Loop back towards the hills and then head for civilisation?"

"Can you all walk?" Amelia asked. The women nodded, some more certainly than others.

"We can't leave the guy here either," Sara said.

"Why?" one of the women demanded. She had a troubling roundness to her stomach that Sara doubted was puppy-fat.

"What he did wasn't his fault," Sara said patiently. "Your captors were drugging him, messing with his head."

"I'll help you," the leader said. "He was my neighbour."

"Was?" Sara asked as she led the woman outside.

"A change of scenery might be a good thing after this," the woman replied, waiting as Sara strapped the shotgun across her back. They each grabbed one of the man's arms, preparing to drag him away.

"Mum, take the other women, move fast. We won't be able to keep up, not with the Incredible Hulk here," Sara said. "Meet up at the motel."

Amelia nodded reluctantly. "You know, you're a little too good at this." But it was said with a half-crooked smile, one that Sara recognised. The one that meant Amelia was pleased, but not entirely sure she should be. "Take care, Sara."

"You too," Sara said as Amelia turned away, hurrying off into the trees with the four women following close behind. _We who have just been saved will follow anyone. _

"What's your name?" Sara asked her companion as they started to drag the man away. The others were already out of sight, lost in the darkness.

"Carrie Elton," she replied. "This fine figure of a man is Bert Arnold." And there was only the briefest of pauses before Carrie asked the million-dollar question. "Those men... Were they human?"

"What else would they be?" Sara replied.

"Monsters."

"It is possible to be both, you know."

Carrie looked down, hiding her face. "Please. I might... I might be pregnant. I need to know what he was."

"Your child will be human. Or close enough to make no difference in the grand scheme of things. Do you know if any of the other women are pregnant?"

"Only one other. She wants to have an abortion."

"You actually talked about that?"

"We had to believe we were getting out of there, lady."

For a while, they walked in silence, trying to manage Burt's unconscious bulk between them. Sara finally screwed up her courage and spoke again.

"Look, if you keep the kid, it might be... it might have..."

"The Mutant-X gene?" Carrie said sarcastically.

Sara smiled faintly, but then turned serious once again. "It might be a seer. Or a psychic. Might have magic in its blood. Might be completely normal."

Carrie nodded slowly. "God, this is crazy."

"Yeah, well, doesn't mean it's not true."

"Will people like you come after the child? If it was... unusual."

"Maybe. It's unlikely, though. Especially if it doesn't hurt anyone."

"Is that what you do? Kill things that hurt people?"

"That's the theory."

"And the reality?"

She was only half-listening, eyes flicking around in search of any hint of movement or pursuit. A faint rustle drew her attention to the right. Sara came to an abrupt halt, nearly dropping Bert. "What the hell are you doing here?" she asked the four women huddled under some trees.

"She told us to wait for you," one replied.

She really did drop Burt and she didn't care one iota as Carrie staggered under the weight. "Where is my mother?"

There was complete silence.

"Where is she?" Sara yelled.

"I think she went back," the woman said. "Back to the cabin."

"Carrie, get them back to town. Do not tell anyone where you really were, okay? Make something up, claim you can't remember, I don't care," Sara ordered. She pulled the shotgun off her back.

Carrie hesitated. "But-"

"Go. Now!"

Sara didn't bother to check Carrie did as she was told, but turned on her heel and started running. She had no idea why her mother would've returned to the cabin, but she didn't much care. Whatever the reason, it wasn't good enough to justify leaving her mother alone with a houseful of incubuses.

She'd spent half her life running through woods. The roots and branches barely registered as she dodged them with instinctive movements. She'd run on hunts before, of course she had. But she'd never had to run back for someone before. Especially not for her mother.

_You get one shot at saving someone. If you have to go back, there's nothing to go back for. _

Amelia Lucian was the best. She'd lasted twenty-six years as an exorcist when few managed to get past ten or fifteen. She'd fought incubuses before. She'd be fine.

Sara could move way faster without Carrie or Bert slowing her down and had a decent enough sense of direction to make sure she was heading in the right direction. It was too easy to get turned around in woods, especially at night, but she wouldn't go off course. She wouldn't let herself.

But luckily instincts often functioned separately from a panicky mind, so Sara did hear the faint crunch of twigs behind her.

When the incubus tried to grab her from behind, Sara was ready, slamming the shotgun back into its ribs and jumping forward out of its reach as she turned to face it. It was, well, pretty. Greek-god sort of pretty, but the eyes were of a Greek god as well. Harsh and uncaring, seeing humans as a source of amusement, but not _alive_ in the way it was. The kind of arrogant bastard Sara hated even when they were human.

"Mine," it hissed.

"Go to hell," she snapped back and shot it. Buckshot worked well against this kind of demon and it fell back. Sara shot it once more, this time in the head, and started running again.

Five women, one man. Five incubuses, one succubus. Only now it was four incubuses. Sara had been _born _with worse odds than that.

She burst back into the clearing, the cabin's front door directly in front of her, just thirty metres away. About halfway between Sara and the house was Amelia, but Sara barely had time to spot her mother before her foot caught on something and she fell forwards, hands snapping out to break her fall. Twisting her head back, Sara saw her mother's rifle, wedged partially into a crack in the base of a nearby tree, at precisely the right height to send a girl sprawling.

Sara scrambled back to her feet. "Mum!" she yelled. "Mum!"

Her cries were drowned out by the roars of rage from inside the cabin. It seemed the monsters had discovered their lack of prisoners.

Amelia stepped through the doorway.

"Mum!" Sara screamed.

The cabin disappeared in flames as the bomb detonated.

xxx

The next chapter will be up by the 1st of November. Reviews are hugely appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Voila, chapter two... Oh, and Happy Halloween, guys!

xxx

Amelia kept her eyes open as she led the women quickly through the forest. When she was sure they were far enough in front of Sara, she put out one hand out to stop the others.

"Stay here," she said. "Wait for my daughter. She'll take you the rest of the way."

"I thought-"

She silenced the speaker with a glare. "Stay low. Keep quiet."

Then she was moving, not heading exactly back the way she came, but going slightly to the side. She mustn't run into her daughter, she just couldn't.

_"Go to hell!" _

Amelia didn't blame Sara for those words. Far from it, she could easily understand hating your own mother enough to say something like that. Judging by Sara's uneasy demeanour after that argument, she had been ashamed of herself. Not that she should be. Amelia was the one who had every reason to be ashamed of herself. Every time Sara started on a rant like that, Amelia egged her on. Trying desperately to get her daughter to snap, to back out, to quit.

She was going to hell. But she wasn't going to drag her daughter with her.

_It hadn't taken much to kick the argument off. Just an offhand comment from a nine-year old Sara. Something about trying harder, not letting the family down. Something about a poltergeist. _

_"I told you, no more!" Amelia yelled, eyes flashing dangerously. "I said she wasn't to be involved!" _

_  
All her life, Amelia had never asked her mother for anything. Not one thing, not when her father was training her, not when her father died. Not until Sara was born and growing up. Even then all she'd wanted was for her little girl, her little Sara, sleeping peacefully upstairs, to be left alone. To be allowed to stay away from the demons. To be human. _

_Apparently even that simple wish was futile. _

_Jean Lucian stared her daughter down, completely unrepentant. "She is a Lucian. She was born involved." _

_"She is not your pathetic soldier. She is my daughter and I will not let her get caught up in a life designed to kill her." _

_"Oh, she's your daughter, is she? Strange. You spend more time in America with men you despise than with her." _

_"Because she is not part of this. She is a child and you will treat her as such." _

_"Don't worry, Amelia. I give her a treat when she faces her demons." _

_"Wasn't what you did to me enough? You really want to put Sara through the same thing?" _

_"Put her through what? The necessary preparations to keep her alive?" _

_"Listen to me! I am her mother and I am telling you, if you don't stop ramming this life down her throat, I will stop you myself!" _

_"You would threaten your own mother?" _

_"I think I've spent enough time hunting to know a monster when one looks straight at me." _

Including when she looked in the mirror. Sometimes, Amelia had the idea that Sara disliked her so much because she could see what Amelia really was. She could see in Amelia what she would become, just as Amelia had looked in horror at Jean all those years ago. But was Amelia any better? She recognised her mother as a monster, recognised herself as a monster, but didn't manage to do a damn thing to keep Sara away. Sara was just too damn stubborn. Amelia's weak protests about the danger, the death, the isolation of their work hadn't been enough to make her daughter walk away from her cursed birthright.

The truth might have been enough. If only Amelia had been brave enough to say it.

But she couldn't. Amelia had never told her mother the truth, couldn't bear to put Jean Lucian through the loss of another family member. In much the same way, she'd never managed to tell Sara either. Sara, for all her sharp words, dirty looks and outright contention, loved her mother with a fierce intensity. Her very presence in the real world attested to that. Hell, her first ever hunt had been a desperate attempt to save her mother's life. And Amelia couldn't lose that.

Amelia moved quickly and quietly to one side, flattening herself against a tree, as she heard her daughter approaching. Sara had moved faster than Amelia had anticipated and that thought created a stab of pain even through the pride. Sara wasn't meant to be here. Not in Minnesota, not fighting monsters, not apparently comforting a woman pregnant with a demon's child.

Maybe Amelia's father hadn't known what he'd been doing to his daughter, but Amelia had known what she was doing to Sara. And that made her worse than any demon. Not that she hadn't tried to stop Sara following her on the path to hell, not that she hadn't tried time and time again to forcibly remove Sara from this life. But somehow, it had never quite been enough.

_Most normal five years old learnt nursery rhymes. Amelia never would get used to her daughter proudly chanting protective spells in the way other kids recited their times-tables or Mary had a little lamb. She'd done the same as a child, of course. It was the Lucian way of raising a child, complete with emotional repression and, later, bitterness. _

_When Sara wandered off, hopefully to do something sort of normal like climb a tree or something, Amelia remained at the kitchen table, still in her travel-rumbled clothes, idly glancing through the notes Jean had made over the past six months. Pronunciation, improving. Curiosity, possibly excessive. Obedience, acceptable. It read like a twisted school report, without any allowances made for the fact that Sara was five. A fairly mature five, but five nonetheless. But this was just meant to tell Amelia how Sara was being prepared for training as an exorcist. It was really only a matter of time before Jean put her foot down and insisted Amelia took Sara to America to battle demons. _

_"She's coming along well," Jean said, watching Sara through the kitchen window. "A little too timid, but she'll outgrow that." _

_"She's only five and you already want her to grow out of things." _

_"Never too young to start work." _

_Amelia wondered if her mother had always been like this or if it was just the effect that marrying a Lucian had on you. She picked up the notes, shuffling them back into a tidy pile. _

_"Never too young to stop, either." _

_Jean turned around, startled. "What?" _

_"I want you to stop training Sara." Amelia didn't look at her mother, but reshuffled the notes instead. One phrase caught her eye – 'Too easily frightened'. "She won't be an exorcist." _

_"I know she's not very promising at the moment, but-" _

_"I don't care if she can make Beelzebub himself dance to her tune." _

_"Amelia, what happened to you?" _

_"Nothing," she replied sharply. "I've decided that Sara won't be trained. That's all. Is that clear, mother?" she asked when Jean didn't respond. _

_Her mother was looking at her like she was crazy. But Amelia got a lot of that and didn't pay it any attention as she followed her daughter into the garden. Maybe she'd teach Sara the words to Mary had a little lamb while she was at it. _

Her first attempt to get Sara out of this life hadn't worked. Jean had continued to teach Sara while Amelia was in America. By the time Jean died and Amelia had the perfect opportunity to keep Sara out once and for all, Sara was just too old. Too old to forget, too old to give up. Just old enough to be riled at being told to stop. Maybe if Amelia had made it clearer to Sara what would happen to her...

But it might not happen. Her own father had never mentioned it. Nor did any of the Lucian Diaries. Maybe it was just Amelia. Maybe Sara would get away with it.

Maybe Sara wouldn't be a monster.

_The Hunter who'd slit her father's throat had left the body for the remaining Lucians to bury. Amelia never did find out who had killed her father or why, but her mother had told her that Hunters hated the exorcists for doing God's work and part of her had believed that. Ten years later, part of her still believed that. Part of her, however, the part that enjoyed working with Maxwell and Pastor Jim, thought that maybe it hadn't been a Hunter at all. Just a killer. _

_Not that she was in any position to take the moral high ground. _

_Amelia Lucian hunched her shoulders against the bitter wind and looked down at her father's grave. Oliver Lucian, 1943-1976. And God Will Come Again in Glory. Amelia always came her first when she visited England. Before seeing her mother or daughter, she went to visit her dead father. And that was fairly weird even for a Lucian. _

_Oliver had believed. Not just as Amelia did, in Jesus and God and salvation, although he had held those things close as well. He had believed in the exorcisms. Believed he was making a difference. He had taught her so carefully, so thoroughly, but he'd never warned her about _this. _This thing, this abnormality. _

_The important thing about being an exorcist was to maintain a clear divide between you and what you fought. Amelia knew that as well as her own name. When you performed an exorcism, there was a moment when the demon wasn't in contact with the host, but with the exorcist. When the soul and demon collided. At the moment, any slip of concentration could result in the exorcist becoming the host. Amelia knew that as well. _

_What she didn't know was why she was suddenly remembering demons' memories. _

_The first time she'd woken in a cold sweat from a dream of mindless slaughter in which she wasn't the prey but the slaughterer, Amelia had written it off as her warped mind sorting out a kink or two and that was that. But the dreams didn't stop. Romans, an African tribe, an Elizabethan player, she was them all and none of them. She killed them all, felt herself end lives, take hosts, even be exorcised. _

_And it terrified her. _

_Memories dictated who a person was. How Amelia reacted to a situation depended on her experiences, on her knowledge. What would happen if the memories became too numerous? What if they overruled who Amelia really was? _

_He should've told her. _

_He should've warned her. _

_But what if he hadn't because this hadn't happened to him? _

_The more exorcisms Amelia did, the stronger the memories got. What would happen to her a year down the line, ten years? _

_What would happen to Sara? _

_What was Amelia doing to Sara? _

_Well, no more. No damn more. _

It just hadn't worked. Sara sometimes said that this life was in her blood and maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn't enough for Amelia to try and get her mother to back off, to try and leave Sara in England. Maybe Sara was... destined to this. Designed for this. Her fate had been sealed the moment she had been conceived.

Amelia didn't want to lead her daughter in to hell. But she already had. Sara was going to fall. Just like her mother. Just like every other Lucian since the first exorcism. Even if the others hadn't absorbed something of the demon, they were all monsters. Amelia had suspected that long before she'd had her daughter. But when Jean Lucian had started talking about continuing the family, Amelia just went along with it. She'd brought her daughter into this world. She couldn't take Sara out of this world.

But maybe she could knock Sara off the road to hell.

Amelia wasn't the greatest Hunter, but she'd had one or two hairy moments during exorcisms and she knew when she was being followed. Her daughter didn't give up. And maybe that was the problem. Amelia increased her pace slightly, glancing at her watch. She had to time this just right.

As the cabin came back into view, Amelia stooped, taking her rifle in one hand, and wedged the weapon into a hole amongst the roots of one tree, the gun angling upwards. Then she walked forward, out from under the cover of the trees, out towards the cabin.

The hairs of the back of her neck rose, just like they always did when monsters were around. Amelia didn't have the same psychic strength as her mother, but she had enough. The incubuses were back home, and from the sounds, they were _pissed. _Amelia smiled. She could live with that. Not that that was her intention, though.

When she heard the thud of a body hitting the ground, the faint grunt of pain, Amelia didn't look round but sped up slightly more again. She was almost there. She didn't look round when Sara screamed for her either. The screams of her daughter mixed with the cries of the monsters and Amelia felt her stomach tighten. She was an exorcist, after all. She knew the value of omens.

_Don't follow me. Sara, please don't follow me, _Amelia pleaded silently as she reached the cabin's door. For the first time, Sara did exactly as she was told.

Amelia smiled at the demons clustered in the wooden building, hearing her daughter cry out one last time.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked them casually.

And then the world went away.

xxx  
Blue Earth, Minnesota,  
20th September, 2002

As a Hunter, Dean was more than used to the idea that sleeping in a bed was more a bonus that a necessity. He'd slept on sofas, in the Impala, even on one notable occasion halfway up a tree. His current location wasn't as bad as the latter, but it was far from perfect. But that was what you got for sleeping on a pew, he supposed.

Sitting up and attempting to stretch the stiffness out of his back, Dean glanced quickly around the church, only to spot Pastor Jim standing by the pulpit.

"Uh... good morning?" he said, fully expecting an earful for not waking Jim and getting to sleep in a proper bed.

"Why is it that the only time I see you in a church, you're asleep?" Jim asked with a faint grin.

"Divine peace?" Dean offered. "Any sign of my dad yet?"

"He called last night, said he'd be here around lunch time. It seems the demon is a little more stubborn that John had anticipated."

Dean jumped guiltily as his phone rang, destroying the peaceful atmosphere. Pastor Jim rolled his eyes slightly as Dean quickly silenced the mobile.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Dean, have you heard from Sara?" came Will Atwood's voice.

"Will? No, not for a week or two." Dean stood up, tensing. "Why? What's happened?"

"She went on a hunt with her mom, something about a succubus. They went out to deal with the demon last night and now Sara's not answering her phone."

"Where was she?"

"This place called Birchdale. It's in northern Minnesota. We're in Texas, we can't get there soon enough."

"I'm at Pastor Jim's. I call you when I find her." Dean hung up and turned to Jim. "How far away is Birchdale?"

"Eight hours. Maybe a little less the way you drive. What's wrong?"

"Sara's missing. Her mom as well."

"Heaven forbid," Jim murmured.

"Tell Dad I'll call him," Dean called, already hurrying out of the church.

Jim watched helplessly from the door as the Impala shot down the road, heading North.

xxx

Next chapter will be up on the third. Please review!


	3. Chapter 3

xxx

Accurate to Pastor's Jim prediction, Dean made it to Birchdale long before the eight hour estimate was up. The town itself was in a state of disbelief. The five women who had been missing for between a month and four months had almost been given up on; to have all five come stumbling into the town's police station, dragging one unconscious male with them, was unprecedented. Half the town was spouting conspiracy theories (conspiracies of what, Dean had to wonder), the other was busy praising the Lord. Dean wasn't in either camp and spent an infuriating few hours trying to find out whether Sara or her mother was in the group that had been admitted to the hospital. The authorities were at first unwilling to disclose information, probably worried about some attempt to snatch the women back, but something in Dean's desperation seemed to convince them, at least enough to confirm that neither Lucian was in the town's one and only hospital.

That plan exhausted, Dean walked slowly out of the hospital. The town was fairly surrounded by trees and hills, it was safe to bet that the women had come from there. Which meant that Sara had been there. Currently, however, 'there' was a fairly huge area. It could take hours to search it all. There had to be some way to narrow it down.

A hurried phone call to Bobby had told Dean that Amelia and Sara had gone after some incubuses and succubuses, planning to free the women and then blow up the demons to hell. But no one in town had mentioned any sort of fire or explosion, so they must have been out of sight of Birchdale. Not that that helped Dean much. He was running out of patience. Pretty soon, he'd give up on information and start trying to track the two women through the woods. He'd already found their motel room, empty and clearly unused. The owner said two women had checked in the day before, taken off at sunset and not been seen since. Normally, a hunt might take more than one night, but Sara had said she was going to call Will. She was very good at doing what she said she'd do. And not only that, but Will couldn't reach her either. Dean had called as well. The phone rang, but no one picked up.

There was no such thing as paranoia for Hunters. If the worst could happen, it most often did.

But he did have one last, desperate lead. One woman had refused to stay in hospital. Excessive eavesdropping had told him who she was and where she'd gone. Now he just had to convince a woman who had no reason to trust males ever again that he was one of the good guys.

When he knocked on her door, he was still toying with the idea of being a reporter or a cop. But when she opened the door cautiously, one side of her pretty face mottled blue and purpled, he lobbed all pretence out of the window.

"Carrie Elton?" he asked. When she nodded, still wary, he continued quickly, "I'm Dean Winchester. I want to talk to you about last night."

"The police told me not to speak to any reporters," Carrie replied. "And I have to say, I don't much want to talk about it anyway."

"I understand that. But..." Dean hesitated for a split second. "I can probably guess what happened. You were being kept somewhere by guys who... didn't seem entirely right, if you know what I mean. Last night, two women, one older, brunette, glasses and one younger than you, a redhead, more gung-ho, rescued you. Set some explosives, told you all to run."

Carrie frowned. "I'm not in the mood for games, Mr Winchester."

"No games. Those women are important to me, miss. And I need to know what happened to them."

The woman softened slightly. "I honestly don't know. I haven't seen them since last night."

"Well, what happened?"

"They got us out, just like you said. The older lady led the other women away, I helped the redhead with Bert. We caught up with the others, they said that the woman had gone back for something. The redhead told us to keep running and went after her friend."

"Mother," Dean corrected absently. "Where were you being kept? Can you remember?"

Carrie nodded. "She told us not to tell the cops."

"Well, I'm not the cops, am I? Could you give me directions or something?"

Carrie did better than that, she actually produced a map of the surrounding area and handed it over, pointing out the relevant spot. "Around there."

Dean nodded, taking the map. "Thanks."

He was halfway to the sidewalk when Carrie spoke again. "I hope you find them."

"I will," he said and kept walking.

xxx

With Carrie's map, finding the right area to start searching was much easier and Dean drove the Impala out of town with the single-minded focus of a Hunter. Recon, search and destroy, search and rescue. It was all the same, at least in terms of control and discipline. When the car couldn't go any further, Dean grabbed a pair of handguns from the trunk and started walking. Carrie had been helpful, but she'd been scared of her wits and running in the dark. There was no way for her to tell Dean exactly where Sara and her mother might be.

But wherever the demons had been, that would be a good place to start. The only consolation Dean could think of at the moment was that incubuses rarely killed their victims. Arguably, what they did do was far worse, but as long as the Lucians were alive, Dean could help them. Could help Sara.

If the succubus was still alive, Dean might had a slight problem, but the guy who had been taken was recovering from his 'drugged mania' nicely, so it was probably dead. Either way, it wouldn't stop Dean from looking for his friend.

He set out from the Impala, using the map to guide him but mostly working from instinct. He wasn't sure if he was following his sense of evil or his sense of Sara, but the physical evidence of crushed grass, broken branches and so on seemed to be supporting him anyway, so he kept going. From the fresh smell in the air, at least part of last night had been spent in rainfall.

As Dean walked further and further from the Impala, he started to call out for Sara, listening to his own voice echo around. But there was no answering shout of _Dean _or, if Amelia was the one to reply, _Winchester! _As a last resort, he pulled out his phone and called Sara over and over again, hoping to hear her ring tone somewhere close by.

He smelt it before it saw it, the charred smell of burning that he knew a little too well. Following his nose now, rather than the map which he had already traded for a handgun, Dean sped up, moving quickly towards the source of the smell. Barely ten metres from the tree line was the blackened shell of a wooden cabin. The remains of the monsters' home and the pheromone bomb, Dean assumed.

And Sara was sitting a short distance away, under a large tree. It was a damn good thing that Birchdale was thorough in clearing the undergrowth or she'd have gone up in flames, just like...

Dean steeled himself as he walked towards his best friend. Hunters had to know how to read people and it was even easier with Sara because Dean knew her. But the only time she'd looked so... lost was when her mother had gone missing, the first time he had met Sara. Add to that the weird body language, the fixed way she was staring at the burnt-out building, and the apparent lack of any sign of Amelia and Dean could figure out what had happened. Not why, but what at least.

And maybe that made it easier to walk over to Sara, because knowing, even just instinctive knowing, was better than suspecting.

Sara was sitting under the tree, but not leaning against it. Her knees were drawn up, her arms stretched out with her hands resting on her knees, but the posture was casual, not scared or panicked. On one side of her was her shotgun and a rifle. Sara didn't usually carry a rifle. She was good with it, but she preferred her shotgun. Amelia's gun, maybe.

Dean crouched down in front of her, but just to one side. Sara didn't even glance at him, but some of the tension seemed to leave her shoulders. Of course, it was hard to tell. A night spent outside, apparently getting soaked by rain on top of the oddly chilly September weather, meant that Sara was shaking despite her warm jacket.

"Hey, Sara," he said. "You're not answering your phone."

She didn't look away from the house, but Dean saw the muscles in her jaw twitch. So she could hear him, she was just ignoring him. He switched from the crouch to sitting by her, facing the same way.

"You know, it's only polite to entertain me now I came all the way out here," Dean continued. "Passed up on a very promising gig in Nebraska for this."

"Nothing happens in Nebraska, Dean," she replied softly.

"True enough. So you wanna tell me what happens in Minnesota instead?"

Sara shook her head helplessly.

"Well, that's okay." Dean brushed the back of her hand with his fingers. "Jesus, you've got cold hands."

"Bad circulation."

"What?"

"I've got bad circulation in my hands and feet. Blood flow's not what it should be, so my fingers and toes freeze up," Sara explained.

They were sitting only a foot or two from the base of the tree. Dean shifted himself back, then reached out to ease Sara back as well. She didn't resist in any way, and although she still wasn't apparently ready to look at Dean, she did look away from the cabin. Instead, she focused on a patch of grass by their feet. Dean draped one arm across her shoulders, either for comfort or for warmth, depending on how full of denial Sara got later, and waited.

And he'd never bring up the way one of Sara's hands twisted in the hem of his button-down shirt like she was trying to hold onto him.

"I don't get it," Sara said to her feet.

"Get what?"

"How... How it works. Or doesn't work. I mean, all the people we save, they run into these things, don't know what the hell they are, but they survive. And an experienced Hunter who knows exactly what's what doesn't. How does that work?"

"Dad says it's like war. The more training you have, the more likely you are to survive. But at the same time, the more training you have, the more dangerous the situations you get put into and the more dangerous you appear to the enemy. Bigger target, you know?"

"So we're soldiers. Only without the government telling us what we do is right or the medals or people saying we did great work when we die."

"Get a unit, though."

"Wasn't enough."

"Only 'cause she wouldn't let it be enough."

Sara tensed, about to pull away, and Dean squeezed a little tighter until she relaxed again.

"You know, we had an argument a few weeks back," Sara said. "'Bout you. About me trusting you."

Dean waited patiently, trying and failing to ignore the guilty unease that was prodding him. He'd always been a... source of disharmony for Sara and her mother. Amelia wanted Sara to be some sort of perfect Lucian. Sara wanted to be human. Everyone knew whose side Dean took.

"We argued 'cause of you and I didn't care," Sara continued, voice trembling slightly. "And now she's dead and I still don't care. How screwed up is that?"

"Would it be easier if I left?"

"No. And that makes it worse."

Dean had done the math already. The Lucians had set out just after sunset. The rescued women had reached town by midnight. He'd been called by Will at eight in the morning. Another seven hours to get here, a couple more hours spent finding Sara... No matter which way you looked at it, she'd been sitting here on her own for way too long.

"I'm meant to take you to Pastor Jim's place," he said. "Dad's waiting for us there."

"Dean..."

"No way in hell am I leaving you here, Sara."

Then Sara did look at him, only a quick glance before looking away again. "Yeah, I know."

Neither moved, both looking again at the remnants of the cabin. After another long moment, Sara pushed away from Dean and stood up. Dean followed, taking her shotgun as Sara bent down and picked up the rifle. As she did so, her two necklaces fell out of her shirt, dangling on their respective chains. A golden cross that Amelia had wanted her to wear, and a silver spiral pendant, an old gift from Dean.

Sara always did that, he realised. Always talked about the Lucians like she was an outsider, not really one of them. Dean just couldn't figure out whether it was because she didn't feel like she was one of them or because she didn't want to be one of them. At a moment like this, he'd be tempted to pick the latter.

They walked silently back to the Impala, side by side. Sara didn't glance back at the cabin even once, letting her eyes run over the ground instead, like a cop looking for clues or something. When Dean popped the trunk and hid her shotgun away in the weapon's compartment, she placed the rifle reluctantly in as well.

"What about your mom's car?"

"It was a rental. In case the cops linked it to the explosion, you know? It's clean. And rented under the name of someone who lives in Norway, I think."

"Smart."

Sara shrugged vaguely.

"Uh, I'll clear out your motel room and then we'll get out of town, okay?"

She nodded once and automatically moved to the passenger seat. Dean had the vague idea that cars in England were the other way around, Amelia's car was like that, but Sara never seemed to make that mistake with the Impala. She always sat in the passenger seat, normally with a book on her lap or some notes or something. Whether she actually got anything done was another matter, but this was the first time Dean could remember her just sitting there, hands folded neatly in her lap.

He wanted to do something, _say _something to snap her out of this. But what could he do? She'd just lost her mother, the only family she had.

With a final, not-so-subtle glance at his best friend, Dean shifted the Impala into gear and headed back to town.

xxx

_Gran had always told her about the bad things in the dark. Even though Sara was old enough to know the demons' proper names and appearances now, somehow she always hung onto the image of shadowy creatures with blurry faces and long nails. The bad things. The things she couldn't quite identify, but hated all the same. _

_Turned out drunk-drivers were in the same category. _

_The funeral for Jean Lucian had been hastily thrown together and poorly attended. Sara had worn her grey school skirt for lack of anything more appropriate and spent the rest of the academic year hating it with a passion. She'd been so glad when her secondary school had insisted on green skirts and, although she never told her mother, the grey one was burnt with a fistful of salt. Amelia Lucian seemed more resigned than anything else. Death was death, be it by demon or car accident. _

_Sara sat quietly next to her mother, listening to a priest who obviously didn't know anything about wards or the proper uses of holy water drone on about salvation and faith and life after death. At ten years old, Sara decided that if there was life after death, it certainly wasn't worth singing about. This life was quite enough to be getting on with, thank you very much. Quite bad enough, that was. _

_Her hunch was proved right after the actual burial, the token handfuls of earth, well, mud that splattered across the wooden coffin as rain dripped into her eyes and her mother turned to her. _

_"I've found a good secondary school for you. A boarding school." _

_Secondary school? Sara wasn't meant to be going to secondary school. She was meant to be going to America, with her mother, with her grandmother for that matter, to fight and hunt and be a real Lucian. _

_"As soon as you're at school, I'll go back to America." Amelia rested one hand on Sara's shoulder. "Okay?" _

_"Yeah," Sara replied. Her mum wanted to be far, far away, just like always. What did she care? "Whatever." _

_But she did care. _

xxx

Sara didn't even realise she was crying until Dean swore slightly and pulled the car over. She could vaguely remember him stopping at the motel and getting her stuff, the bags were now sitting on the back seat, but not much after that. Shock, said her practical Lucian side. The Sara side was too busy with the crying and mortification at crying to care much. Shit, it was getting way too easy to split herself in half.

Crying was worth bothering with. Didn't change anything, didn't save anyone, didn't help Sara most of the time. As a child, she'd cried once or twice under the covers at night, softly so her gran wouldn't hear. At school, sleeping in a dorm room with one to three other girls, crying in bed wasn't an option. _I'm scared because my mother's hunting a monster and won't pick up the phone _wasn't a valid excuse. Sara spent her teenage years crying in locked bathrooms if she cried at all.

Dean was pulling her close, saying something along the lines of "Damn, Sara,". She automatically tried to pull back, hands going up to hide her tears, but Dean wouldn't let her and she gave up a little too quickly for her liking and just sobbed.

She would never be able to work out what she'd been saying as she cried, just that she had said something. Mostly apologies, she later guessed. She didn't know what for or who to. But she did hear what Dean was saying over and over.

"I got you, it's gonna be okay. It'll get better, I promise. You'll be okay."

And for the first time Sara just couldn't believe him. Not even when he said _I promise. _

xxx

Word spread quickly through the Hunters...

_Amelia Lucian's dead. Killed in Minnesota. _

And the question bounced back just as quick...

_So who'll do the exorcisms? _

There was an answer to that, of course. But Amelia had spent eighteen years keeping her daughter and heir far, far away from the American Hunters and another three years keeping her involvement in the exorcisms so quiet it was silent. Sara had performed all but one of the exorcisms that had been done since 2001, but only three people knew that. Amelia Lucian, Sara Lucian and John Winchester.

But how the hell John had found out, Sara had no idea. It wasn't such a great surprise, sneaky bastard that he was.

He was waiting for them when the Impala pulled up outside Pastor Jim's church the next day, leaning by the notice board. John Winchester was used to death and loss and, more than that, he could use his eyes and brain, so he didn't need to ask what had happened when only Sara and Dean stepped out of the car.

"We need to talk," he said calmly. No meaningless condolences or pathetic phrases.

"In a minute," Sara replied, just as calm. There was no sign of her breakdown in the car or the fact that she'd spent the greater part of the night in tears. "I have to speak to Pastor Jim."

And she walked into the church, cool as anything.

"Do you know what happened?" John asked his son.

Dean shrugged. "Amelia's dead. Can't get any details out of Sara, but I'm guessing she didn't clear the blast zone in time. Maybe one of the demons grabbed her, I don't know."

"And Sara?"

"What do you think?"

"I think she'll cope."

"Hope you're right."

They stood in silence until Sara returned, just as calm and collected as when she left, with Pastor Jim walking behind her.

"I guess I have some work to do," she said softly. "So I'll be accepted as the next Lucian. Apparently, you used to tell Hunters about Mum," she said to Pastor Jim, who nodded.

"And I'll do the same for you."

"Thank you. John, she once told me that you could help me with the Hunters themselves."

"Sooner would be better, in that regard," he replied.

Sara nodded. "Makes sense." She glanced at Dean, then back to John. "Give me a second to catch my breath?"

John obviously saw the same thing in Dean that Sara had because he nodded without complaint.

"Jim, you said something about a new source?" he said.

"Uh, yes, of course..."

And the two men wandered back into the church, leaving Dean and Sara alone. Silently, they walked around the church to the graveyard, both sitting down on the low wall surrounding the graves. They'd done this before, kids waiting outside while the adults talked business.

"Well, at least I don't have to worry about a funeral," Sara said finally. "I hate those things."

"Sara..."

"Yeah?"

"You're sure you're ready for this? Just... leaping in, just like that?"

Sara smiled, shaking her head. "You know, there used to be just as many exorcists as Hunters at one point. But something happened and the Hunters turned on them. Killed almost all of them. So without exorcists, how do you think they dealt with possessed hosts?"

Dean knew the answers, not that he liked them. "Burning. Beheading."

"And burial alive," Sara added. "Half the Hunters will already know Mum's dead. If I don't get them on my side pretty soon, they'll go back to the old ways. They gotta have faith in me which means I have to do my job. Now."

"I know. Just doesn't feel right."

"Yeah, well, none of it does. But they don't want me to be a grieving daughter, Dean. They want me to be an exorcist. And I can do that."

"Is that enough?"

"No. But it's not all I have."

She slipped off the wall, standing straight for the first time since Dean had found her. Sara was a born sloucher, like Sammy, but she always stood tall when working. Always.

"Hey, Dean," she called over her shoulder as she walked away. "Be careful, okay?"

"You too."

Sara didn't look back, focused on shoring up her internal walls. Not a single weakness could be seen by the Hunters. First impressions were everything.

John was waiting by his truck. Well, he could wait a moment longer and Sara walked to the church doors. Next to them was a donation slot. Sara pulled the gold cross out from around her neck and, with some difficulty, fed it through the slot. That seemed to be the only way God was going to do any good.

She matched John's look with one of her own, daring him to say anything. After a moment, he just gestured to the trunk.

"So where are we going?" she asked, climbing in.

"Nebraska."

xxx

Next chapter should be up on the 5th. Big thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

xxx

Life was a test, a test which you took without any lessons or prior reading and never found out the mark you got for until it was _way _too late.

Sara was used to that. Growing up with Jean Lucian, who wouldn't answer questions if she thought there was a harder way to make Sara find out the answer, had acclimatised her pretty thoroughly. Everything was a test. She knew that. But she couldn't always figure out what was being tested.

"A roadhouse?" she asked, looking up at the lit sign. "Let me guess. Harvelle's a Hunter?"

"Was. His wife runs the place now, still stays in contact with a lot of Hunters. Place should be full of them."

"...You want me to _socialise?" _

"People can't call the exorcist if they don't know the exorcist."

She knew better than to ask if he was coming in with her. Sara had never needed anyone holding her hand and she wasn't about to start now. "Can you not do that?"

"Do what?"

"Sound like my grandmother," Sara snapped and got out of the truck. Okay, that had been illogical, but she was allowed five minutes of unreasonable anger. Or at least the few seconds it took to cross to the roadhouse's door.

There were a handful of various vehicles surrounding the roadhouse. Some trucks, cars, a motorbike or two. Hunters knew better than to advertise their profession, but all of them showed evidence of hard driving. And, hanging from one rear-view mirror, was a charm-bundle.

So Hunters did have some sort of independent network. Sara knew that all Hunters knew other Hunters and messages and tactics often got passed from circle to circle faster than a Wendigo could manage, but those networks depended on individuals. If those individuals were lost, it could take months to re-establish the links. It wasn't like Hunters could advertise meetings in the local paper. But Amelia had always insisted on Sara staying out of the Hunters' way. There were a handful of exceptions and one or two Hunters that she knew by name and phone number only, like Jefferson, but this would be the first time she came face to face with a Hunter that hadn't been verified by someone she trusted with her life.

With that sort of anticipation, it was hardly surprising that the roadhouse was a bit of a let-down. A bar, some tables and chairs, some pool tables, a battered jukebox. All normal for a watering-hole. But the drinkers...

They were mostly men, with only three women that Sara could see, and all dressed in stubbornly practical work clothes. Tattered jeans, well-worn boots, flannel shirts. The uniform of Hunters. Sara counted five scars, twelve pistols and eight blades before she reached the bar. They way they sized Sara up as she walked in singled them out as men who knew that chaos really could come in small packages. While none reached for a weapon, they didn't immediately write her off as a threat either.

Her own appearance probably helped with that. For once, she was unarmed, but she moved like a Hunter and she had no qualms about meeting eye contact. The important thing was not to seem weak or scared. So she kept her head held high and face calm as she approached the bar. Lucian arrogance was good for something, it seemed.

"What can I get for you, sweetie?" asked the woman standing behind the bar.

Sara didn't drink much, preferring control to intoxication. But she doubted that ordering water would be the best starting move.

"Got any Glenmorangie?"

The woman nodded, already setting a glass in front of her. "Not many people ask for that... Lucian."

Sara didn't miss how several Hunters pricked up their ears. "That obvious, huh?" she commented with a faint smile. Ordering her mother's favourite drink might not have been the best idea if she wanted to lay low, but Sara needed attention.

"Well, I heard about what happened. Your mom always said you'd come through that door over her dead body. Ellen Harvelle."

"Sara Lucian. I can't imagine my mother in a place like this. No offence."

"Oh, I haven't seen Amelia in years. She spent quite a bit of time here before that, though."

"You have contact with other Hunters?"

Ellen smiled. "They'll be putting my girl through college."

Sara slid a scrap of paper across the bar. "The new number for possessions. A head's up is always appreciated."

"Kid's going to need more than that to be able to do a damn thing."

Sara turned. The speaker was a Hunter, had to be, a little younger than John and with a sense of arrogance that John lacked entirely. She was well aware of the other Hunters listening in and raised her voice to make it easier for them. "You got a name or just a nasty attitude?"

"Chris."

"And you doubt my capabilities?"

He shrugged. "You're just another kid full of half-baked romantic ideas. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into."

"Really? I helped with my first cleansing when I was nine. First hunt when I was sixteen. Did my first solo exorcism when I was nineteen." Yeah, so she was only twenty-one, but this idiot didn't know that. "When did you start fighting, o ye of utmost knowledge?"

"Leave the girl alone, Lewis," said another Hunter. "Lucian wouldn't bother with a dud trainee."

"Lewis?" Sara repeated and memory flicked a card. "Christopher Lewis, I should've known. You're the one who tried an exorcism in Louisiana, right? Uh, ninety-nine, I think it was. And as I recall, you would've been possessed yourself if my mother hadn't been there to bail your worthless butt out of trouble. So how about you leave the work to them that are fit for it, okay?"

She was asking for the punch that Chris gave her and stayed stubbornly on her feet as he faced her, waiting for her retaliation.

"Someone care to tell me the rules for roughhousing in here?" she asked the room in general, wiping a trickle of blood away from her lip.

"You break it, you buy it," Ellen said.

Sara nodded and belted Chris across the face, following the punch immediately with a jab to the stomach, winding him.

"Tell me that doesn't apply to the clientele," she commented as Chris doubled over.

That got an appreciative chuckle from a Hunter or two. Sara snapped her knee up to hit Chris under the jaw, knocking him over.

"You get up again, I knock you right back down," she told him firmly, planting a foot on his chest a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. "Now, Chris, my lad, this is how it's going to be. I'm going to do what my mother taught me to do. You're going to leave the exorcisms to me. Because while I am very similar to my mother in terms of abilities, I cannot abide uppity little gits like you. You get in trouble again, I won't get involved. Not until you're in enough shit that every Hunter in America is gunning for you even after I rip the demon out of you. We clear?"

Chris glared.

"Good," she said with a bright smile. "As for the rest of you gentlemen, I look forward to working with you. Assuming there are no other issues."

When no one said anything, Sara finished off her scotch, handed over payment to Ellen and headed for the exit. She hadn't come to socialise, just make a point and it seemed her point had been made.

She hadn't paid a huge amount of attention to the Hunter sitting by the door when she walked in, just registered his presence in case something went wrong. Walking back, however, gave her a prime view of this particular man. Her very favourite arms' dealer.

Caleb offered a faint smile and gestured at the other chair. After a moment's hesitation, Sara sat down.

"Didn't peg you as a social butterfly," she said, leaning back.

"John told me you'd be here. Thought you might need some backup."

"Not quite the vote of the confidence I was hoping for."

"Because a girl can so easily take on a bar full of Hunters all by herself."

"But she can probably sneak out of the back door when everyone starts fighting everyone else." She shifted forward in her chair. "I should get going, Cal."

He nodded. "If you need anything..."

"Oh, can you get me another load of silver bullets? I'm almost out."

Caleb sighed. "Not what I meant, Sara."

"Do you really think that I want to mourn my mother by jumping into bed with a Hunter?"

"I just thought you might want some comfort."

Sara let some of the Lucian edges soften. "Comfort can be found in many forms, Caleb. And I'll take mine in silver bullets."

"I thought you didn't want to become that person," he said as she reached the door.

"Looks like that person kinda became me," she replied. "I'll see you around."

xxx

At Sara's request, John dropped her off just outside of Clifton, Wisconsin. With one duffel slung over a shoulder and the other held in one hand, she slowly walked to the house she shared- had shared with her mother.

Amelia Lucian had chosen Wisconsin almost as random. She'd needed a place to live, somewhere to catch her breath and plan the next job and, as she moved further from hunting and dedicated herself to tracking instead, she'd needed a place to store her research. But it had never been a home and now that Amelia was gone, Sara wanted nothing more than to get out of there.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. Before she could do anything with the house, Sara would have to clear it of any supernatural traces, not to mention sort out all the paperwork. That at least would be fairly simple, just time consuming. Sara knew her mother kept everything in meticulous order. Will up to date, legal documents carefully stored and ready to go, all placed neatly in the bottom right hand drawer of her mother's desk.

Yeah, it was kinda wrong that she'd known that since she was eleven, but whatever.

The Lucians had been working since the days when witch-hunting had been a respected career. Over the hundreds of years, the rewards and bounties had added up to a tidy sum which, thanks to some shrewd investments, had paid for this house, Sara's education, even the silver bullets she was so fond of. Due to some old legal hoo-ha, all of that went straight to Sara as the sole Lucian. If Sara ever had a child, the money would become theirs immediately with Sara only holding it in trust. It was a nice and entirely legal trick to get around inheritance tax. But Amelia had left a list of bequests, in a way, not written down by calmly discussed and explained a few years back.

Sara put the will to one side and picked up the next document. The lease for the house. How typical was that? Amelia had been living in America for almost twenty years and she was still only renting a home. No, not a home. A house. That was all it had ever been and Sara wasn't going to let herself get sentimental now.

Okay, so rent was paid monthly. Cool. Sara just had to call the owner, break the lease and all would be good. That meant she had two weeks to sort out some other accommodation. Or maybe she could live out of motels. That worked well for Hunters, and with the invention of mobile phones, she hardly needed to be easily to find geographically. Be more flexible, as well. Of course, she'd need to find a decent place to store the Lucian Diaries, not to mention the ways of tracking possessed hosts.

Slowly, quietly, she pulled the bottom left hand drawer of the desk open. A loaded Beretta, always of great comfort. Just as calmly, she pulled her hand back, leaving the gun where it was.

She looked up. "You know, normal people ring the bell."

Dean was leaning against the doorframe. "Yeah, well, I ain't normal."

"True enough," Sara said.

"You ok?"

"Got to hit a guy. Made me feel oddly better. I should be worried by that, right?"

"Probably. So where did Dad take you?"

"Just to meet some Hunters. Damn, Dean, I don't know what Mum did but it seems they have faith in me just 'cause Mum said I could do it." She offered Dean a smile. "Don't tell 'em that she said I couldn't for eighteen years of my life, 'kay?"

"You're gonna do fine, Sara. Better than fine."

"The Atwoods know, right?"

"Yeah. I told them."

"Thanks," Sara said, picking up the documents and pushing her chair back.

Dean sighed. "Okay, what?"

"Huh?"

"You got that look again. The one that says you're about to tell me something I don't wanna hear."

"I have to leave for a few days."

"I was right. I didn't wanna hear that. Where're you going?"

"England. Need to talk to some people."

"Your mom had a fan club?" But it wasn't said mockingly. That was just Dean being Dean. Why ask politely when there was a chance to be a git?

"Not really. I have to talk to her lawyers. Should probably give the Westwoods an update. Gran's family," she added.

"Yeah, I remember. I thought they hated the Lucians."

"They do. But they're still family in a twisted sort of way."

Dean nodded. "We're good at that, aren't we?"

"A little too good, probably. I gotta go. See you when I get back?"

"'Course. Mind if I hang here 'till then?"

Sara shrugged. "Make the most of it, Dean. I'm gonna move out asap. Any chance of you packing up all the Lucian Diaries for me? They're all in here." She gestured at the bookshelves.

"Sure thing. Hey," he said.

Sara turned back. "Yeah?"

"You're sure you're okay?"

"I'm always okay, Dean, remember?"

xxx  
St. Michael and All Angels Church,  
London, England

St. Michael's was, for lack of better term, the Lucian family church. It was a couple of hundred years old and was mentioned in just about every Lucian Diary that still existed. Sara remembered it pretty well. She'd been baptised here, although of course she didn't remember that, and had visited at least once a year for the first ten years of her life, mostly to commemorate the death of her grandfather. By all rights, Jean Lucian's funeral should've been held here as well, but Amelia had chosen another church seemingly at random. Sara tried not to think about that too much.

St Michael's open door policy had made it depressingly easy to scope the place out and when Sara returned at quarter to midnight, the locks proved way too easy to pick. Resisting the urge to track down the priest and give him a lecture on proper security, Sara stepped into the darkened church. There was some light from the street-lamps on the street outside, fake yellow light making the church look slightly bizarre. She pulled out her torch anyway. Unlike the standard pocket torches favoured by most Hunters, Sara's was longer and heavier. Made a good club as well as a light source.

At the East end of the church was the High Altar, right against the wall. Like many churches, St. Michael's now had a second altar slightly further into the church, but Sara was only concerned with the High Altar. Behind it was the Lucian crypt. She just prayed- hoped that the entrance was still useable.

By all rights, she'd done all she needed to in England. Spoken to the family lawyers, made some arrangements for her mother's bequests, even tracked down the remnants of her grandmother's family, the disapproving Westwoods. That had gone truly terribly, but who cared. Sara had done what she'd set out to do and that was good enough for the moment. But this...

This was important.

And that would hold so much more weight if she could just explain to herself _why_.

Sara reached one arm behind the altar, stretching and working blind until her fingers caught on the cracked carving and she could pull it sharply toward her. The crypt had been built into the church all right, but it had always been hidden. The entrance unsealed and she could manipulate the cover until she could slip through.

The crypt was small, cramped and dusty. Nothing too special, just a stone box with shelves filled with small urns or boxes of ashes. All that was left of the Lucians. One wall, the east wall, was covered in smooth wooden planks, with a list of names engraved in tiny letters. And, right at the bottom and scratched in shakily, amateurishly, was:

"Jean Lucian," she whispered, tracing the name. So her mother had cared. Cared enough to sneak here on her own, to scratch Jean's name next to that of the man she had married.

Sara knelt on the stone floor, slipped her backpack off her shoulders. Her battered black backpack, the latest in a long line of black backpacks. She always found replacements which were as close to the current one as possible. Just another quirk in her already twisted self. She opened the bag and pulled out a package of herbs, the standard battered tin bowl, a box of matches. A cleansing of sorts.

Open the packet, tip the herbs out, be careful not to spill any. Ritual movements, habit and method and tradition all mixed up until Sara couldn't draw the line between what was her and what was someone else. Her eyes prickled and Sara blinked furiously. This wasn't the time to start crying again. It didn't do any good. It wouldn't get the job done. _So suck it up and keep going. _

The Diaries were pretty clear about this particular ritual. It wasn't magic, not a real cleansing or anything, just a... remembrance. Sara's faith had been shaky since she was a kid and this had pretty much decimated it, but she managed to say the right words as she light a match and set the herbs on fire.

"Remember, O Lord, the God of Spirits and of all Flesh, those whom we have remembered and those whom we have not remembered, men of the true faith, from righteous Abel unto today; do thou thyself give them rest there in the land of the living, in thy kingdom, in the delight of Paradise, in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our holy fathers, from whence pain and sorrow and sighing have fled away, where the light of thy countenance visiteth them and always shineth upon them."

As she waited for the herbs to burn out, she flicked open her pocket knife and added Amelia's name to the board. It wasn't that easy and she nearly sliced her own thumb off, but it was done by the time the herbs were gone.

"Poor bastards," she murmured, looking over the names one last time. "Poor, stupid bastards."

Shaking her head, Sara gathered up her things and left the crypt.

And when Father Isaac reentered the church the next morning, he found a note pinned to the door.

_God helps those who help themselves. Replace the locks. _

xxx  
Clifton, Wisconsin

"So, this box is going with the Atwoods," Dean said. "And that one?"

Sara looked up to see which one he was pointing at. "Uh, to Pastor Jim. Actually, hang on, was that one for Bobby?"

"I thought it was that dude in Canada, uh, Maxwell," Adrian said.

"No, it's _this _one that's going to Canada," Will asserted.

"Boys, shut it for a minute," Sara said firmly. "I've already Fed-exed the books for Maxwell. The boxes from upstairs are going with the Atwoods to Black Earth. No others, we clear?"

"Yes, Sara," the Atwoods chorused, grinning.

"Already loaded up," Will added. "Just messing with you."

"Should've known," Sara replied. "I'll meet you guys there later."

The two brothers left, Adrian giving Dean a friendly punch to the arm as he passed.

"As for the others..." Sara pulled a box toward her. "Solomon, Psammetichus... Okay, this is Jim's and so's that one. Which means the other three are for Bobby."

"How come Bobby gets more?" Dean asked.

"'Cause that's the way Mum divided it up. Bobby gets more books, Pastor Jim gets more cash for his church. All the demon tracking stuff is on its way to Black Earth and my new home. Mum's stuff to Goodwill." Except for the few personal possessions that Sara had hidden away guiltily. "And voila. All done."

"You know, I'm kinda gonna miss this place."

Sara passed him one of the last boxes. "The Atwoods' home is just as convenient, Dean. Besides, it's not like I'm going to be spending all my time at home, no matter where I live."

"Road-tripping is overrated."

"Says the guy who views his car as an extension of his soul."

"I just mean... You don't have to do everything like a Hunter."

Sara paused. "You remember when Sam left, and I told you that trying to limit the effect hunting has on your life is like trying to hold back the Nile with a teaspoon? That rule still applies. Anyway, isn't doing things like a Hunter better than doing them like a Lucian? Now, come on. I told the owner I'd be out of here by lunch."

So Dean smiled and helped her shift the boxes, making jokes all the time, despite the prickle of worry that he could feel. He was a Hunter, he had good instincts and right now, he knew that Sara wasn't okay and that this not-okayness went way beyond the death of her mother. But maybe if he did his best to stick around, he could figure out what and how to deal with it before it got Sara killed.

xxx  
1st October,  
The Rainy River, Minnesota

Sara found it harder than she would've liked to get away from Dean and the Atwood brothers. Sweet guys, all three of them, but after only a week she was ready to smack one -or all- of them in the face. But once her plan was sort of finalised, it was easy enough to slip away on the pretence of a hunt. Admittedly, none of them knew that she was actually only about a quarter of an hour from the spot where her mother had died, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

She killed the bike a short distance from the river bank and left her helmet and jacket draped over it. A few key items were pulled out of her bag; a pair of silver charms on fine chains wrapped around her wrists and a flat stone pendant hung around her neck. Sara looked from the river to a nearby tree. That one would do. She'd been climbing trees since she was a kid and it was easy to pull herself up, even with the two golden coins clutched in one hand.

Carefully, she edged along one branch until she was over the river and took a deep breath.

"Deomai de sou," she said clearly. "Epitrepson moi eiserchesthai, oraein ton porthmea."

And jumped.

Her feet hit stone, her legs gave way, so Sara ended up on her hands and knees. She was still by the bank of a river, but not the Rainy River. This river was unnatural, old and thoroughly creepy. The River Styx, the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead. She couldn't see the massed ranks of those waiting to cross over, but there was an annoying flicker in the corner of her eye that told her they were there. Somewhere.

"Shit. It worked."

"Well, of course it worked, kid. Otherwise you'd be floating to the coast."

Sara looked up. "...Charon?"

"The one and only," the legendary ferryman said. He didn't look bad for someone who was three-thousand-plus years old, despite the frown. Really, he looked like some of the Oxford students Sara had seen punting back in England. "Do I know you?"

"Uh... Well, it's my first time here. Is that your boat?"

The boat in question was tiny and made of grey wood. Sara could almost see the holes in it.

"Hasn't let me down yet." Charon looked her over carefully. "Kid, you're still alive. What the hell are you doing here?"

Sara stood up, opening her hand. "My... my mother wasn't buried properly. I came to pay her fare." Cautiously, she stretched out her hand, the two coins glinting in her palm.

"Huh. Name?" A clipboard appeared in Charon's hands.

"Amelia Lucian."

The clipboard vanished again. "She's already gone, kid. Moved on about a week ago."

"Oh. Okay, then." She threw the coins into the boat. "Payment in advance, then. For the next poor sod who can't pay."

"You know the way back?"

"Yeah. Did my homework. I guess I'll see you later," Sara said. "Where did you take her?" she asked, looking carefully at the ground.

"Only way for you to know that is to sail out yourself."

She looked up at Charon again. "Don't think it's quite my time for that, sir."

Charon laughed. "Oh, with your genes, kid, you don't have to wait for your time."

Sara's mouth tightened. "Maybe not. But you won't see me here again before that, you hear me?"

"Makes no never mind to me, kid. I'm just the ferryman. Now," he waved one hand at her. "Get out of here."

Sara nodded once in farewell and walked off, choosing a direction at random. The important thing was just to walk away from the river. Everything else would kinda take care of itself. She shut her eyes, one hand clutching her silver-spiral pendant so tightly she could feel the pointed end digging into her palm.

_Homewards, homewards, homewards I go... _

Getting to the River Styx required ritual. Getting back home needed something more. It needed _want,_ an actual desire to go home.

And Sara opened her eyes to the Rainy River.

She didn't understand why her mother had chosen to walk straight back into danger, into a trap she herself had laid, into a situation she must have known would kill her. Sara had always known about the Lucians' short life-expectancy, but she had always chalked it up to the dangerous job they did. Now she was starting to realise that maybe the greatest danger wasn't the demons that possessed people, not the ones she could fight, but the ones that got under your skin in a completely different way. The ones that you created for yourself and then couldn't kill.

Maybe Sara did understand after all. Exorcisms were messy. Messy, brutal, hateful. And they left Sara with an ache inside, a sickness, a feeling of _wrongness _so acute she felt like a monster. But she couldn't stop. Couldn't take Charon up on his offer and cash her life in for a one-way trip on the River Styx.

Sara had fought her way into this life. Now she'd fight her way through it.

In her jacket pocket, her phone started to ring. Sara hurried to answer, pulling off the spell-charms as she did so.

"Lucian," she said, holding the phone in one hand and the assorted charms in the other.

"Hey, Sara. You okay?" said Dean's familiar voice.

And she didn't even have to fight alone.

Sara turned and flung the charms into the river. She wouldn't be needing those anytime sure, she was certain. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

And for the first time since her mother died, Sara wasn't lying through her teeth when she said that.

xxx

And that's the end of _So Cold. _Obviously, this isn't the end of the road for Sara's grief or for Dean and Sara's extended adventures, but this seemed to me like a suitable place to conclude this instalment. Dean and Sara will return shortly in _False Reflections, _in which an investigation becomes personal when Dean goes missing on a hunt.

Reviews, as always, are loved and treasured.

Oh, and what Sara says before jumping means (hopefully) _Allow me, I beg, to enter, to speak to the ferryman _in Ancient Greek. Any mistranslations can be attributed to the fact that Sara prefers Latin.


End file.
